Sunday 20 January 2013

Confessions of a Denialist




A couple of days ago on Exploring Our Matrix (a blog I thoroughly recommend for RS students), James McGrath compared Jesus mythicists with those who spin conspiracy theories around the recent shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. McGrath took a bit of a pasting from some commenters on his blog, who found the comparison offensive.

I have mixed feelings about McGrath’s post. Upon reflection, I think McGrath was wrong to use the tragedy to score a cheap point in an academic debate. However, I do I think McGrath’s argument is a valid one: some of the reasoning employed by mythicists could equally be (and indeed is) used to justify all sorts of marginal theories, including thoroughly unpleasant positions such as 9/11 trutherism and holocaust denial. At the same time, I think it needs to be made clear that pointing out that (for example) holocaust deniers and mythicists employ similar arguments, or that the two movements share other characteristics, does not imply that there is any moral equivalence between these positions.

I thought it might be useful then, to make a comparison between mythicism and a different form of denialism, one where I actually sympathise with the ideology that underpins it. As it happens, I think I’m in a reasonable place to be able to do this because something has recently dawned upon me: I used to be a denialist.

Let me explain. Some of you might know that I’m a vegetarian. These days I’m a fairly sloppy sort of vegetarian: I wear leather shoes, I don’t obsessively check food labels for suspect ingredients, and I occasionally enjoy the odd pint of bitter, even though it might contain extract of fish bladder. In my younger days though, I took it all much more seriously. I kept a strict vegan diet, pitched up at animal rights demos, and saved up my pennies to buy vegetarian DMs. Thinking back, I’m amazed that my friends and family put up with me for as long as they did, I must have been a terrible bore…

Like many vegetarians, I became interested the debate about the legitimacy of vivisection, the use of animals in medical experiments. In particular, I held a view, common among people who hold strong beliefs about animal rights, that scientific experiments on animals are not only morally unjustifiable, but also scientifically flawed.

A few days ago, I read an interesting blog post on some of the tactics used by denialists and noticed that the author listed the anti-vivisection movement as an example of denialism. And of course he was spot on. I’d never really thought about it before but there it was: I used to be a denialist. 

As with other forms of denialism, the position of anti-vivisection campaigners is completely opposed to the consensus position among medical researchers (i.e. that animals offer the best model of the human body when testing new medicines or procedures). As with other forms of denialism, anti-vivisectionists tend to focus on the problems with the scientific case for animal experiments (such as the case of thalidomide, where animal experiments failed to identify a risk to unborn children). As with other forms of denialism, prominent anti-vivisection authors often (though not invariably) lack relevant qualifications and expertise. As with other forms of denialism, these authors tend to appeal directly to the general public rather than participating in genuine academic discussion (via self-published books and leaflets; we didn’t have the internet in my day).

And as with other forms of denialism, anti-vivisectionists tend to share a strong ideology that is obviously closely related to the debated issue. So just as holocaust deniers are usually characterised by anti-semitic views, and mythicists tend to share a militant form of atheism, anti-vivisectionists almost invariably share a strong commitment to animal rights.

One of my students once asked me whether I thought that denialists arrive at their views on the basis of their ideology and then manipulate the evidence to support their views, or whether it was more likely that their ideology predisposed them to look at the evidence in a particular way, such that they arrived at a conclusion that supported the ideology. It’s an excellent question, and the answer is, I think, a little bit of both.

Of course, denialists reject the idea that ideology has anything to do with their views on the issue being debated, and in a sense I think they’re telling the truth. Certainly I genuinely thought that animal experiments were scientifically flawed, and I could have given you plenty of evidence why that was the case. I’d say I was pretty good at debating with people on the topic, even people with more obvious qualifications than mine.

What I think what is happening here is that a set of ideological beliefs is predisposing the denialist to interpret the evidence that favours their existing beliefs. However, once this has happened, I think perhaps this reading of the evidence strengthens the initial ideology. Once the evidence (or at least your reading of it) has persuaded you that animal experiments aren’t even good science, wouldn’t that make you more convinced that you were right in the first place that animals are misused by scientists? Similarly, once the evidence has persuaded you that the holocaust is a hoax arising out of a Jewish conspiracy, wouldn’t that confirm your anti-semitic worldview? And when the evidence has persuaded you that Jesus didn’t even exist, wouldn’t that make you more convinced that religion is a lie? And so, as the ideology is reinforced, a denialist’s reading of the evidence becomes ever more biased, and the ideology becomes more and more confirmed – a denialicious circle.

That’s why I think it’s almost impossible to confront almost any form of denialism on the basis of the evidence. Actually, I’ll clarify that: mainstream historians and scientists should certainly address the flaws and errors in the arguments of denialists, but it’s as well to recognise that you’re not going to change a denialist’s mind merely by pointing out that their reading of the evidence is wrong. Denialists will either ignore or gainsay any evidence that you put forward.

I suspect that the only way that most denialists will change their minds is by coming to see that there is something wrong with the underlying ideology, or at least that things are not quite as black and white as they appear. Certainly, nobody ever persuaded me on evidence grounds that I was wrong about vivisection. Actually I could still put up a pretty good fight in a debate if you feel like a row about it.  What happened was that as time passed I gradually became less vegangelical. I lapsed to being a regular vegetarian, stopped reading animal rights literature, and generally found other things to think about. As that happened, I think that gave me the intellectual space to re-think my perspectives.

So today, while I’m still uncomfortable with the idea of vivisection, I’ve come to accept that they are scientifically valid. It would be convenient for me if they weren’t, but they are. Perhaps a necessary part of becoming a mature thinking person is realising that the world does not always arrange itself to suit our beliefs.

41 comments:

  1. 'What I think what is happening here is that a set of ideological beliefs is predisposing the denialist to interpret the evidence that favours their existing beliefs.'

    No wonder Dominican priests are now writing books claiming Jesus never existed.

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    1. Thanks for the comment Steven.

      I'd say that most denial movements have a certain ideological centre of gravity. I met a few non-vegetarians on animal rights demos I went on, and apparently there was even a Jewish person by the name of David Cole who advocated holocaust denial for a while. But I don't think that changes the general tendency that proponents of those views tend to share a certain set of ideological beliefs.

      I would (genuinely) be interested to know how Brodie describes his wider religious beliefs - is he still a theist?

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    2. PS: Possibly not a Dominican priest for much longer...

      http://www.thesun.ie/irishsol/homepage/news/4754775/Pulpit-Fiction.html

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    3. 1) It's worth noting here that Paul Regnier himself is not a licensed Psychologist; and therefore his ascriptions of "denialism" to Mythicists are themselves, unscientific; amounting to little more than pseudo-psychology.

      2) As for his remarks on Brodie? McGrath and Regnier have often argued or assumed that Historicism is based on clear, objective, standard historical reasoning. And yet? The press has just noted that Mythicist Thom Brodie is apparently being disciplined by his Church for his Mythicist views.

      The disciplining of Tom Brodie suggests, as a case in point, that religious pressure, bias from believers, is indeed often brought against Mythicists; thus biasing the field of HJ studies, heavily. (Unless one wants to say the Church is entirely objective?).

      Though of course like true Historians, we're waiting for verification of the Brodie story, the early indications here are not good for your and McGrath's constant assertions of the strict objectivity of Historicism. The recent censure of Brodie, appears to be a case in point.

      Dr. Brettongarcia, Ph.D.

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    4. Thanks for the comment Dr Brettongarcia.

      1) Do you mean that the idea of denialism is unscientific pseudo-psychology, or that I'm wrong in identifying mythicism as an example of a denial movement?

      2) "Thom Brodie is apparently being disciplined by his Church for his Mythicist views." The key word there is "church".

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  2. The following is from Michael Shermer’s “Why People Believe Weird Things”:

    * Holocaust deniers find errors in the scholarship of historians and then imply that therefore their conclusions are wrong, as if historians never make mistakes. Evolution deniers (a more appropriate term than creationists) find errors in science and imply that all of science is wrong, as if scientists never make mistakes.

    * Holocaust deniers are fond of quoting, usually out of context, leading Nazis, Jews, and Holocaust scholars to make it sound like they are supporting Holocaust deniers’ claims. Evolution deniers are fond of quoting leading scientists like Stephen Jay Gould and Ernst Mayr out of context and implying that they are cagily denying the reality of evolution.

    * Holocaust deniers contend that genuine and honest debate between Holocaust scholars means they themselves doubt the Holocaust or cannot get their stories straight. Evolution deniers argue that genuine and honest debate between scientists means even they doubt evolution or cannot get their science straight. (p. 132)

    Every one of these points, from my observation, applies to scholars who are attempting to denigrate mythicism, but I have not seen mythicists like Doherty or Wells or Price or Zindler or Salm or Elgard or Thompson or Brodie fall into any of these types of fallacious reasonings.

    How many times do we see scholars attacking mythicism by means of:

    * declaring the whole conclusion false because of a few errors in some of the arguments,

    * quoting mythicists out of context and misleadingly,

    * and contending that because mythicists disagree the whole thing must be wrong?

    Yet each one of these grounds is applicable to the holocaust denier — whom several biblical scholars compare with mythicists – so says Michael Shermer.

    Besides, isn't "denialism" supposed to be a rejection of "uncomfortable" or "disturbing" truths? If so, what does that have to do with mythicism? Who cares if Jesus did or didn't exist? What difference does it make to anyone? It's just a question of historical debate, and I can't imagine anyone being threatened by the idea that Jesus existed. The only people who would think that are fundies who think atheists etc "hate God" or "don't want to be held accountable for their sins" and such rot.

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    1. Thanks for the comments Neil,

      I’m part-way through writing a post on some of the features that identify denial movements. I’ll try to get it finished in the next couple of weeks (I’ve got a bit more reading to do for it) and then in a subsequent post I’ll try to outline why I think mythicism exhibits most of those features.

      I’ve seen various definitions of denialism. For historical denial movements, I’d suggest the following definition “a form of pseudohistory that rejects a fundamental consensus position in a particular field by denying the existence or occurrence of an individual, group, or event”.

      I think “clinging to a convenient falsehood” might be a better way of thinking about it than “denying an uncomfortable truth”

      Mainstream scholarship doesn’t invariably get it right when countering pseudohistory or pseudoscience. Fritze points out that one of the reasons that Velikovsky's ideas were popular was that scientists kept fluffing their rebuttals - Sometimes they were too technical, on other occasions the scientists hadn't bothered to read Velikovsky's work or made sloppy mistakes that could be picked on by Velikovsky's supporters.

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    2. 'I’m part-way through writing a post on some of the features that identify denial movements.'

      That's going to be a whole lot easier for you to do than answering mythicist arguments.

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    3. One of the points I made in the above post is that evidence and reasoned argument don't have much effect.

      Still, if you think there's a compelling mythicist argument that you need me to answer, and if you think I might persuade you where people much smarter and better qualified than me have failed, please let me know what it is and I'll happily write a post about that too.

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    4. You still seem to equate "mythicism" with the idea of "clinging to a convenient falsehood". What do you mean by "convenient falsehood"? That does imply a judgment on the motives of those who argue mythicism. It does sound like you are stuck in your presumption that mythicists are some sort of God-haters or have some anti-Christian vendetta.

      I am disappointed you have not chosen to address Shermer's points as they apply to the anti-mythicist arguments of the McGraths, the Hoffmanns, the Hurtados, the Watts, and indeed from arguments I have seen you yourself put forward.



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    5. REGNIER
      One of the points I made in the above post is that evidence and reasoned argument don't have much effect.

      CARR
      How can you tell? They are rarely used.

      Admittedly, Ehrman wrote a book about how Jesus existed, citing the fact that some words in a story about Jesus raising somebody from the dead are in Aramaic - the very language Jesus wrote.

      But, of course, historicists saw what one of the world's leading Biblical scholars had produced by the way of anti-mythicist 'evidence and reasoned argument' and promptly decided never to use it.

      Denialism is a lot stronger once you see that even leading scholars like Bart Ehrman have nothing to offer except his degree certificates.

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    6. Neil, each of Shermer's points apply rather well to mythicists. When I get chance to finish the couple of posts I want to write I'll be sure to provide some examples.

      I think it's fairly clear that mythicism is disproportionately popular among atheists of a certain type who don't seem to have much love for Christianity. For example - the strapline for the Jesus Never Existed website is "Uncompromising exposure of the counterfeit origins of Christianity and of the evil it has brought to the world."

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  3. Paul is right! You can't be a Dominican priest and deny Jesus existed.

    Because you then get sacked.

    By the way, have any Holocaust deniers ever been sacked for their writings?

    That makes mythicism just like Holocaust denial!

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    1. "By the way, have any Holocaust deniers ever been sacked for their writings?"

      Sacked for their views, certainly. A quick google search will give you a few examples. You can also find cases of holocaust deniers being imprisoned for their views, since holocaust denial is a crime in many countries. You can also find examples of people being sacked for supporting creationism.

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    2. Which is wrong (being imprisoned) isn't it? You and I might think it is crazy that someone could think that the Holocaust never happened but I do think people should be free to speak what they think even if you don't agree with it or even all the evidence is pointing the other way.

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    3. Yes I think it is wrong.

      I'm not trying to argue that it's right, I just think it's inconsistent to cite what's happened with Brodie as evidence that minority views in Biblical Studies are suppressed while pretending that the same (or worse) doesn't happen elsewhere.

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  4. Forget suppression of minority views. What we're talking about here is confirmation bias. Most of the people who have written about whether Jesus existed belonged to a church that commanded them to believe Jesus existed (and punished anyone who said otherwise, a great way to create an environment where no one says otherwise). If you need to think Jesus died on the cross for your sins, then you need to believe he existed.

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    1. "If you need to think Jesus died on the cross for your sins, then you need to believe he existed."

      It might be a necessary condition, but it's hardly a sufficient one. There's a fair amount of pressure to conform to key Muslim beliefs in certain parts of the Muslim world, but I still think it likely that Muhammad existed.

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    2. Just to catch up on the basic idea behind your attack on mythicists' "Denialism": Denialists you say in effect, are people who just can't see or face the obvious; that JESUS IS REAL.

      But doesn't your Historicism, your attack on Mythicism, come out sounding curiously like a typical evangelist slogan? Suggesting that a residual religious instinct or bias, is your real motivation.

      Deep down, Historicists are really believers, who can't let go. No matter what the evidence against their belief is. No matter how much evidence there is that Jesus is obviously myth: that people can't walk on water and so forth.

      So that ironically? Historicists are the real Denialists after all. Denialism is particularly characteristic of after all, religious folks.

      Always look for the beam in your own eye before you criticize others. As St. Paul noted, it is human nature to criticize others, for your very own specific sins.

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    3. Romans 2.1: "Therefore you have no excuse, O man, whoever you are, when you judge another; for in passing judgement upon him you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things."

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    4. Anonymous,

      Again, there a rather large difference between believing in the historicity of a given person and accepting any theological claim about that person.

      Dead easy question for you here: do you believe in the historicity of Haile Selassie?

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    5. Regnier is setting up another red herring. Rather than talk about Jesus, he will start to talk about Haile Selassie.

      Haile Selassie was an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian throughout his life.

      His religion was well documented.

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    6. Perhaps you could let our anonymous friend answer the question before you accuse me of setting up red herrings Steven?

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  5. Here is a dead easy question for him :-

    Does he believe in the historicity of Frank "Rocky" Fiegel?

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  6. Paul,

    To what extent, if any, does the research of Leon Festinger and particularly his book "When Prophecy Fails" (including its coinage of the term "cognitive dissonance") have on your thinking about denial movements?

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    1. Mike, thanks for the comment and for linking to my post about atheist church services over on your own blog. Again sorry for the delay in replying, I’ve had a busy couple of weeks with academic, pastoral and sporting commitments at school.

      Anyhow, I’m aware of Festinger’s work and the idea of cognitive dissonance, but I can’t say it really fed into the article above. I’ve previously tended to think about denialism in essentially sociological terms, i.e. as movements with a certain set of formal characteristics. The above article was an attempt to reflect on some of my own past beliefs, and to raise a question as to whether something similar is behind mythicist reasoning.

      A comparison with Festinger’s work might be interesting, although I guess as a caution (which also applies to my own thoughts), I’d add that The End of Prophecy was based on a detailed observation of a specific group, which I clearly haven’t done in the case of mythicism (I’ve never actually met a mythicist in the flesh, though perhaps I’ll get to share a pint with Steven one day).

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    2. Thanks, Paul.

      And, yes, I agree that, as you imply, the ratio of those making an amicus brief on behalf of Mythicism to those those who will actually admit to holding the view is quite high. Whether that is a standard feature of denial movements or something unique to Jesus Mythicism is an interesting question in and of itself.

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  7. Paul, did you see my question just above?

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    1. Yep - apologies Mike, I'm near the end of a 13 day stint at work. Will respond as soon as I get chance!

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  8. 'I suspect that the only way that most denialists will change their minds is by coming to see that there is something wrong with the underlying ideology, or at least that things are not quite as black and white as they appear.'

    So people who claim that the earliest Christians thought of Jesus as a heavenly being can only be persuaded that they are wrong , if they can be brought to show that there is something wrong with their view that religion is false?

    While people who say there was a real Jesus of Nazareth, who was a nutcase proclaiming the end of the world, and who had appointed 12 fishermen and tax-collectors to judge the world after the apocalypse - those people are not motivated by any anti-Christian agenda?

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    1. So people who claim that the earliest Christians thought of Jesus as a heavenly being can only be persuaded that they are wrong , if they can be brought to show that there is something wrong with their view that religion is false?

      In my post above I suggest that persuading a denialist that they're wrong purely on the basis of the evidence is difficult, because the views they hold are reinforced by (and in turn reinforce) a separate set of ideological beliefs.

      When you say "brought to show", I don't think it's my job (as an agnostic) or the job of NT scholars to try to persuade you or Carrier or Neil or BG that religion is a wonderful thing or that the cosmological argument proves that God definitely exists.

      In my own case no-one persuaded me that my views on animal rights were incorrect, I just developed a slightly more nuanced set of beliefs over time and the ideology that I think underpinned my views on animal experiments was less important to me and opened the door to me thinking that I was wrong.

      I should also point out that there is no a priori reason to think that the ideology that underpins a given set of denialist beliefs is itself false. For example, even if the evidence suggests that animals offer a reasonable model of the human body for the purposes of scientific experiments, this doesn't mean that animal rights supporters are wrong to think that animals have equal value to human beings.

      While people who say there was a real Jesus of Nazareth, who was a nutcase proclaiming the end of the world, and who had appointed 12 fishermen and tax-collectors to judge the world after the apocalypse - those people are not motivated by any anti-Christian agenda?

      I wonder if describing Jesus as a "nutcase" is to an imposing your own view on the mainstream scholarly consensus? No, I don't mainstream scholarship is motivated by an anti-Christian agenda, since the mainstream view is advocated by a wide range of scholars, whether their religious views are Christian, agnostic, atheist, Jewish. This isn't to say that every shade of Christian is going to be happy about the mainstream scholarly view, of course.

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  9. 'At the same time, I think it needs to be made clear that pointing out that (for example) holocaust deniers and mythicists employ similar arguments...'

    There is something in that.

    Both denialists and mythicists question common English translations of foreign words.

    David Irving, for example, claims that the German word 'ausrotten' did not mean 'to root out, exterminate' during WW2. A startling claim to anybody who can speak German, as the meaning of 'ausrotten' is very clear.


    A quick glance at a 1939 German dictionary shows the deceptive nature of this claim by David Irving.

    Earl Doherty claims that the word normally translated in Bibles as 'born', in Galatians 4:4, is the word 'ginomai', and that this word actually means 'made', rather than 'born' of a woman.

    Doherty quotes early Christian apologists like Tertullian explaining that Paul deliberately chose to say 'made' rather than 'born'.

    Doherty also points out that Paul said Adam was 'ginomai'. Adam was not born of a woman.

    Doherty also points out that Paul uses a different word for 'born' in the very same chapter as he said Jesus was 'made of a woman', when Paul talks about people who really were born from a woman.

    Doherty quotes Bart Ehrman who pointed out that Galatians 4:4 was often altered by Christian scribes who changed the word 'ginomai' to the word more usually used for 'born' , which was 'gennomenon'.

    So both mythicists and denialists question the normal English translation of foreign words.

    Shows how deceptive they both are. Both employ exactly the same tactics.

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    1. Thanks Steven. It's a neat comparison, thanks for pointing it out.

      Hoffmann explains why the term in Gal 4:4 should not be translated as made here:

      http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/on-not-explaining-born-of-a-woman/

      There's also a fairly detailed page explaining why Doherty's translation of Hebrews 9:28 is 'contrived and completely unsupported' here:

      http://www.bede.org.uk/price2.htm

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    2. Is that the Hoffman who used to write articles explainging why Galatians 4:4 was an interpolation?

      Or a different Hoffman?

      It is hard to keep track of the Hoffman's. There are so many of them.

      As far as I know, 'Bede' knows little Greek and less Latin...

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    3. Steven, are we discussing translation or textual criticism?

      And surely even you can see the irony of a mythicist getting snooty about a layperson contributing to the discussion. When historicists do that, isn't it called ad hominem and a fallacious appeal to authority?

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  10. It was you who just gave out a URL, as though it was an argument.

    A URL is not an argument.

    I simply pointed out that your argument from URL was an argument from non-authority, as Bede is not an authority. Price himself is a lawyer, a proven lawyer , in Peter Cook's words.

    If you supply an argument why the King James Version translation of Galatians 4:4 is wrong, or an argument why Hoffman is correct to say both that Paul wrote Galatians 4:4 and that it is an also an interpolation, then we could have a discussion.

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    1. The problem with supplying arguments to you Steven is that your track record suggests that you will either ignore them or pretend that I have made a completely different argument and then triumphantly respond to that. URLs are indeed not arguments, but then they're not wasted efforts either and as I've pointed out to Mike above, I don't have much time to waste right now. With respect, are you really interested in reasoned discussion all of a sudden?

      Price is a lawyer. Godfery is a librarian, Rene Salm is a piano teacher. Price isn't an "authority", but what exactly qualifies Doherty as an authority? He has no post-graduate qualifications, as far as I'm aware has never been published in a mainstream, peer-reviewed journal, and doesn't even have a verifiable undergraduate degree.

      Again, isn't it a tad rich for you to play the appeal to authority card against Price's arguments?

      PS: You gain a bonus point for quoting Peter Cook.

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  11. 'I wonder if describing Jesus as a "nutcase" is to an imposing your own view on the mainstream scholarly consensus? '

    CARR
    You don't think appointing 12 fishermen and tax-collectors to help you judge the 12 tribes of Israel after the apocalypse is a sign of somebody who needs help?

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    1. I think we simply don't have the kind of evidence that would enable us to evaluate Jesus' psychological state.

      It's obviously possible to label somebody who holds a worldview we see as foreign, weird, or objectionable, as mad, but I wonder if that's simply a judgement on the worldview rather than the person?

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